


What chaos, what a din!

by Carmarthen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Character Death Fix, Classical Music, Fade to Black, Fashion & Couture, Fix-It, M/M, Operas, Riots, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, sorry this has nothing to do with Vautrin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Montparnasse attends the 1838 premiere of Hector Berlioz's <i>Benvenuto Cellini</i>, at which two things happen: a riot breaks out and he encounters an old friend. These are not entirely disconnected occurrences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What chaos, what a din!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knowyourwayinthedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knowyourwayinthedark/gifts).



> Blessings to acaramelmacchiato for sending me on the right opera rabbit-trail for the setup, for giving me the second and third lines, which I shamelessly stole, and for reassuring asspats; and to Miss M for a last-minute beta. And thanks to everyone else who put up with my hypocritical last-minute whining about how writing is hard, particularly melannen and drcalvin.
> 
> I hope it's sort of vaguely like what you wanted, and I wish I'd had this idea early enough to do it more justice.

His coat was cut in the latest style, tight in the waist and narrow in the shoulders; his new hat was brushed and shining; his cravat cunningly tied; his waistcoat impeccable. Montparnasse fixed a lock of his hair under the brim of his hat and, setting that straight, walked into the the Salle Le Peletier anticipating a riot.

He was not wrong.

The opera, the premiere of Berlioz’s _Benvenuto Cellini,_ began ordinarily enough: Montparnasse eyed the rise of the curtain with some trepidation, for it must be said that he did not particularly care for opera. The charms of the lovely Madame Dorus-Gras, while less than ample, were not to be underestimated, of course. If pressed he might confess to a certain particular appreciation for the ladies in trouser roles as well, but as far as he was concerned, opera itself was little more than caterwauling, the men coarse, and the costumes often terribly unflattering. Really, simply because one set out to imitate antique style did not excuse poor fit, or ill-suited colors.

Just as he was deaf to the inner music of love, so Montparnasse, beautiful, amoral Montparnasse, was deaf to the tones and rhythms of the violin and flute, and to the exquisite instrument of Madame’s crystal voice.

One might wonder why, then, Montparnasse chose to spend that September evening at the opera, rather than engaged in more pleasurable pursuits. The answer was twofold: one, he had the box from his patron, a Monsieur Favre, who being otherwise occupied on business had fondly told him he ought to enjoy himself. Two, being rather bored with Favre--a creature of entirely bourgeois sensibilities and hideous waistcoats, who fucked like a banker--Montparnasse thought it prudent to consider his options. Certainly he was still handsome enough to do better than Favre. Thus the new hat, thus the waistcoat, thus the perfectly curled lock of shining black hair.

The overture ended to applause and a chorus of shouts from the galleries; Montparnasse languidly joined in clapping, admiring the slim elegance of his hands in their white gloves. He picked a speck of lint off the back of one hand. Lord, that there was more than an hour of this until intermission, when he might move among the boxes and make conversation! Montparnasse had the face of an angel and the soul of a barbarian.

The curtain rose, and Montparnasse stuffed a couple balls of wax into his ears.

Midway through the first act, Montparnasse had ceased to watch the stage, on which the actors gamely dodged thrown shoes and the occasional remainder of someone’s supper while attempting to sing over the whistles and cat-calling, and had turned his attention to the fights breaking out in the upper galleries.

“What rubbish!” cried a voice, apparently from within Montparnasse’s box. With an effort, he refrained from looking; he knew perfectly well that no one had entered besides himself.

“A discordant tangle of nonsense!” the voice continued, now from a few boxes to the left; the inhabitants, a dowager with a vulgar set of diamonds Montparnasse would dearly have loved to pawn and a gentleman in an equally vulgar but less intriguing waistcoat, protested loudly, adding to the din.

The voice was decidedly familiar, Montparnasse thought. Deeper, perhaps, than he remembered, but still with a hectic verve, a mode of diction, that tickled at his memory. The voice continued to leap around the theatre, insulting the music, the singers, and the costuming. But where did it originate?

Its mocking comments danced from box to box, down into the orchestra and up into the galleries, once even into the orchestra pit; but never into the parterre. He peered through his glasses for a while into the dimness at the back of the orchestra, but it was only an agitated crush of hissing and shouts; there was no way to guess who the ventriloquist might be.

Before the intermission, the fighting had spilled out of the galleries. Montparnasse as a rule avoided fisticuffs, as he disliked both the disarray to his person and the prospect of an unsightly injury; once he had preferred the slim elegance of a blade, but alas, it was not as if he could simply slit throats until he reached the street. He had given up that activity some years ago; the waistcoat was brand-new, besides, and it would truly be a crime to dirty it with blood. He was beginning to feel a little resentful of being trapped in the box.

“ _Ah! que vais-je faire?_ ” sang Madame Dorus-Gras, with slightly more genuine desperation than the line perhaps required. Montparnasse was beginning to empathize.

* * *

At last the curtain went down for the intermission. It sounded a little quieter out in the hallway, so Montparnasse decided to risk peering out to see if the way to the exit was clear.

It was not.

He ducked someone’s fist, thrust his cane between the man’s feet to send him tumbling to the ground, and grabbed the nearest fellow, a tall redhead in a workman’s cap, by the collar and hauled him backwards into the box.

Whatever he had meant to ask fled his thoughts entirely when the man turned around, and he suddenly remembered why the ventriloquist had sounded so familiar.

“Gavroche!”

“Who were you expecting?” Gavroche laughed, stepping out of Montparnasse’s suddenly slack grip, and leaned his shoulders against the wall of the box, casual as you please, chest heaving and teeth bared in a familiar grin.

He had grown up a great deal since the morning after the barricade of the rue de la Chanvrerie fell. In this tall young man there was only a shadow of the gamin he had last seen kneeling over Éponine's body, the second and last time in his life thus far that Montparnasse had found himself moved to reflection.

It was the only time he had seen Gavroche without a smile or a song on his lips, and that, as much as the sad, pale remnant of the girl he had almost cared for, had shaken him. He had accepted the lock of hair that Gavroche offered him, and had even worn it for a time, fashioned into a pin; a melancholy air of mourning had proved attractive to grisettes. If somewhere in what passed for his heart he had felt a buried pang of true grief, he did not waste time in thinking on it.

All the same, he had shortly thereafter abandoned his former idle trade with little reluctance for one equally idle but less likely to end at the Abbey of Monte-à-Regret.

He thought little of Gavroche in the intervening years.

Gavroche was perhaps a little underfed, a little gawky, but nothing that a few years and a few good meals would not address; his hair had darkened to a shade of pale copper unusual enough to be striking; and the cocky smile that had been endearing on a boy was charming on a man. He was, Montparnasse realized with mild shock, rather attractive, although disheveled, bleeding from a split lip, and in some need of a bath.

"Was that you, throwing your voice earlier?" he asked, affecting disinterest.

Gavroche's lips scarcely seemed to move, but his voice spoke in Montparnasse's ear, a low whisper that almost made him shiver: “Of course not,” and then in his other ear, “what a question!”

“Well,” said Montparnasse, “it was a pretty trick, whoever did it.”

A grimace; Gavroche touched his lip, his fingers coming away red. “Ah, not everyone thought so.” He shrugged, a surprisingly graceful roll of wide shoulders. “Still, what a din! I don’t know what old Hector was thinking, unloading such rot on us. Why, if I had actually paid for my ticket, I should have demanded my money back!”

“It’s all the same to me,” said Montparnasse.

“Don’t you care for opera?”

“Not at all.”

“But opera is sublimity! Art elevates us from the mud; it shows us what we can strive to be! On the wings of song a new tomorrow is born.” Gavroche’s thin face was animated with something of that half-mad vivacity of the gamin, although there was perhaps a faint weary bitterness as well. “And,” he added, “there are pretty girls in short skirts.”

Montparnasse inclined his head, conceding the last point, although in his opinion that merely elevated the opera to ‘tolerable,’ rather than ‘sublime.’ Montparnasse was not a great believer in sublimity.

“Well,” said Gavroche, leaning over and setting an ear against the door, grimacing at whatever he heard, “unless you fancy fighting your way out, we’ll have to wait until the crush dies away.” He said this in a jaunty voice that did not waver, as if he did not know that Montparnasse had killed more men than he could recall before he even turned twenty; but he did know, and that was part of why Montparnasse had always liked him. Even as a child, Gavroche had never betrayed a hint of fear, whether he felt it or not.

“I rather missed you, Gavroche,” said Montparnasse, sitting down again in one of the plush yet uncomfortable gilt chairs and crossing one leg neatly over his other knee. He removed his gloves and examined his nails, which were neatly trimmed and buffed to a shine. “Whatever have you been doing with yourself?”

“This and that,” Gavroche replied, waving a hand vaguely but with twice as much dramatic flair as any of the poor singers below, valiantly attempting to reach the finale and the chance to flee backstage. “Throwing bricks through windows, taming lions. I work occasionally. If you know anyone who might be interested in a few cases of good Spanish brandy that may have been accidentally overlooked by the customs-man, I know a fellow...” He trailed off suggestively. 

“But you!” Gavroche continued after a moment. His gaze flicked over Montparnasse’s clothing, which was, he knew, in perfect order, not a patch or a snag or an ill-fitted seam, and of far better cloth than he had afforded before. It was an insufficiently admiring gaze--perhaps even with something of mockery in it--but clearly by _his_ dirty workman’s trousers, the stained shirt and the cap shoved low over his brow, Gavroche had learned no more appreciation for the finer things in life than he had held as a gamin. A pity, when he had grown up so well.

“You’ve come up in the world, with a box at the opera you don’t even care for.” 

“It’s not my box,” said Montparnasse. “I would not even be here, unless--well, it’s not important. But the box belongs to my uncle.”

“Your uncle.” Gavroche’s tone was one of extreme skepticism, and then he smiled. “Oh, your _uncle._ ”

He was not, Montparnasse noted with some disappointment, discomfitted in the slightest, or even surprised.

“Well,” said Gavroche, “I suppose it is less likely to injure your ugly old face than your previous line of work.” He slid slowly down the wall to sit on the floor, long legs sprawled out in front of him. “Do you suppose the second act will be any better than the first?”

“I doubt it.” 

They sat there in silence, regarding each other. Montparnasse allowed himself to imagine, for a moment, taking Gavroche to his tailor. Blue for the waistcoat, to echo his eyes; hardly any padding needed for the shoulders. With proper tailoring, he might not even look so gangly. Then a barber, to shape his hair into something resembling a cut. Yes, he might even pass for a gentleman; certainly he would look finer in a tailcoat than Monsieur Favre, but then, so would a penguin.

The silence stretched, grew taut. Montparnasse, who could tell a potential patron from the other side of the gallery, who could estimate the size of a man’s wallet by how he walked, could not read the faintly amused curl of Gavroche’s smile.

“There’s blood on your lip,” he said, after a moment, and leaned over to brush it away. 

Gavroche’s mouth was soft under his thumb; his eyes teasing as he parted his lips, just a little. Montparnasse shuddered faintly before he could stop himself. “Well,” Gavroche murmured against his fingertips, “there are worse ways to pass the time.”

* * *

Montparnasse stepped out into the rue le Peletier much as he had entered: his hair perfectly arranged, his hat set at an appropriate angle. His overcoat, fortunately, hid his trousers, which were less fortunately beyond redemption, and there was a bit of blood staining his shirt collar.

“I’ll see you around.” Gavroche tipped his cap, and slipped away into the crowd.

Well, Montparnasse thought as he carefully pulled on his gloves, it was not so surprising. Stranger things had happened at the opera, and at least for once it had not been _dull._

Not at all.

He found he rather hoped Gavroche was right.

**Author's Note:**

> " _Benvenuto Cellini_ was produced at the Paris Opéra on 10 September 1838 under the conductorship of Habeneck. The Overture was acclaimed. Shortly after the rise of the curtain hardly anything was audible. Berlioz had friends and admirers, but they were unable to compete with the cat-calls and whistles which resounded continuously throughout the performance. Hooliganism was rampant, every kind of device being employed to hinder, if not stop, the performance. Not the least effective of these devices came from a ventriloquist in the ‘parterre’ who threw his voice from box to box, the protests of the occupants adding to the general confusion. The work was withdrawn after four performances and did not reappear in Paris until the opening of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in 1913."
> 
> -"[Benvenuto Cellini](http://www.hberlioz.com/others/NDemuth1967.htm)," by Norman Denuth (1957)
> 
> 1) I have taken about as many liberties with history as I imagine Hugo would have for the sake of opera riots. This means I made up a lot of details; please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm still going to assume boxes at the Salle Le Peletier had doors whether or not they did.
> 
> 2) As melannen pointed out, if anyone in Les Miz is likely to be a ventriloquist, it's Gavroche.
> 
> 3) To trick myself into writing Les Miz, I mentally imagined adult Gavroche as a grubbier Bereczki Z. in his sort of gawky period. If you were wondering why he's a redhead.
> 
> 4) I'm sorry this is all setup and no actual dicktouch, I'm the worst.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [unexpected ecounter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1424665) by [apfelstrudelz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelstrudelz/pseuds/apfelstrudelz)




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